TURNING OUT HORSES TO GRASS. 
571 
nient to summer his hunters at grass/ I much doubt whether 
his plan is well suited for restoring the legs and feet of 
valuable horses that have been much battered about to their 
primitive soundness. 
“ The fact is that when horses have suffered in their work 
from anything of the nature of strain of the sinews or their 
ligaments, or when the legs are very much the worse for wear, 
they should be allowed no exercise but such as they can get 
in a loose box; they should be treated as a man would be 
who has sprained his ankle and must be confined to his sofa. 
On the other hand, I have seen horses who were pretty good 
on their legs, but stale, groggy, and tucked up from hard 
work and dry and exciting food, improve as if by magic 
when turned out to grass on the following plan. I have 
housed them during the day time in a well-ventilated build- 
ing, darkened so as to exclude the sun and flies, giving 
them about half a peck of corn daily, with bran and clover 
chaff ; they have thus been turned out at night in a pasture 
in which there was an abundance of grass. Under these 
circumstances they are never tormented by flies : when they 
are out all is cool and quiet, the long grass saturated with 
dew supplies an admirable, cool, refrigerating poultice to 
their legs and feet, and the grass they get, combined with 
their daily feed of corn, seems to plump up their bodies 
without much interfering with their condition for work. I 
have taken up horses treated in this way as late as September, 
and had them in a very fair order for work by the com- 
mencement of the hunting season. I am aware that this 
system will not suit all horses; small- barrelled washy horses 
are too much purged by green food ; they are also, in general, 
restless and irritable, galloping about and tearing their com- 
panions, and so are better at home. It may be said against 
this plan that it gives more trouble than keeping the horse 
altogether in the stable, and is not economical. This may 
possibly be the case, but with valuable horses we must not 
grudge a little trouble ; and I believe, in the long run, it will 
prove more economical than leaving the animals out in the 
field all day exposed to the heat of the sun and the attacks 
of the incessantly persecuting flies. 
“I cannot sufficiently praise what Mr. Cartledge said some 
time ago respecting the allowing horses a more liberal supply 
of water than is clone by many horsekeepers; in fact, the 
supply should be unrestricted, and where it can be possibly 
managed it should be always placed before them. The mas- 
tication and digestion of such dry provender as hay and corn 
are cannot be properly carried on without occasional sips of 
